Initially, when I read that today is Minka Kelly’s 34th birthday, I started writing a sort of ironic tribute to her career, with a tongue-in-cheek undertone that ultimately asked the question – how is this girl not more of a successful actress? Then, I obviously got into her career highlights and recent lowlights, as well as the inevitable relationship with Derek Jeter and even that pathetic period when she was one of those girls lured in by the satanic charm of John Mayer*. But as I looked through her TV and film credits, as well as all the red carpets, modeling shoots and random events, I ended up deleting everything because… Minka Kelly was the girl in the pink shirt in the music video for Puddle of Mudd’s “She Hates Me.”

Sure, this is old news to at least 18 people. And maybe I already knew this in the back of my head, but I just don’t feel like enough people know. After all, I remembered that she was briefly in the video for Something Corporate’s “If You C Jordan.” Don’t remember that one? The Sherminator slaps her ass. Here’s the GIF…

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With all due respect to Something Corporate, Puddle of Mudd’s “She Hates Me” dominated radio airplay in 2002, which is amazing considering the song was a throwaway that the band wrote in 1993. “She Hates Me” reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks in 2002 and ranked as high as No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 list. That had nothing to do with Kelly, though, who would eventually go on to have an incredibly, confusingly lackluster career. Seriously, how has Jessica Alba been an A-lister but Kelly hasn’t? Hollywood has never turned a pretty face away because of something as trivial as being a bad actress. My theory? Hollywood is run by a very vindictive Boston Red Sox fan.

Her relationship with Jeter aside – as well as her relationships with Mayer, Donald Faison and… Wilmer Valderrama – this is about how it all started for a young lady born Minka Dufay, who 34 years later is known as Minka Kelly, star of Friday Night Lights and The Roommate, as well as some TV shows that were canceled. It all really began with “She Hates Me” and one of the most stereotypical American rock videos that was ever created in the 00s, from the t-shirt bros jamming out on a stage on an empty street to some good, old-fashioned teenage angst.

Let’s go ahead and GIF this one on out just in case you, unlike most of us, aren’t willing to travel back and celebrate one of the most awfully awesome (or awesomely awful?) rock anthems of the last 20 years.

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Trust, of course, is such an important component of a relationship.

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Wait, who is Minka talking to? Who hates her? Is she feuding with another popular female student or is there something more to this?

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Maybe she doesn’t get better roles because no one ever taught her how to use a phone.

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I imagine those last three are what she looked like through most of August 2011. And here’s what I looked like when I found out she dated Fez.